BECKY SHARP (1935)

Fresh off three-in-a-row divas, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich & Anna Sten (Sam Goldwyn’s diva manqué), Rouben Mamoulian was the obvious choice to take over Hollywood’s first 3-strip TechniColor feature after initial director Lowell Sherman died. But, perhaps because of the many technical challenges for him, cinematographer Ray Rennahan & legendary stage designer Robert Edmond Jones (his sole feature credit), star Miriam Hopkins (superb under Mamoulian in JEKYLL & HYDE/’31) is untamed in this slimline VANITY FAIR adaptation. For Becky Sharp’s social climbing adventuress (something of a Napoleonic Era Scarlett O’Hara) to come off, she needs to be knowingly deceitful a third of the time; earnest a third of the time; and not sure of her motives a third of the time. But Hopkins, playing at a continuous trot, always seems to be faking it, quickly exhausting our sympathies, with a reverse in fortune every other minute. With only Cedric Hardwicke, an opportunistic Marquis willing to pay for favors, able to arrest her forward momentum, schemes & giggles. Yet the film demands attention anyway after a miraculous restoration (dating back to 1986) rescued its extraordinary look from the mess of inferior reissues (including a 2-tone CineColor degradation) and back to Mamoulian’s dramatically coordinated primary palette. A visual feast right from the start, as pastel gowned ladies enter thru a soft blue curtain, on to an early pictorial climax as a fancy ball sequence filled with gaily-colored gowns undergoes an invasion of swirling red military cloaks when word of Napoleon and the Battle of Waterloo spreads past any rules of courtly etiquette. A few bits here & there remain in less than pristine condition, but the lapses only emphasize the shock audiences must have felt at the time. Not all positive BTW; reviewers noted the hot-house look, especially in ladies’ makeup and in flushed skin tones. But oh, those portrait shots! As if each 35mm frame were a fine lithograph. Which, in original TechniColor, they pretty much were.

READ ALL ABOUT IT: See Tom Milne’s short, irreplaceable monograph MAMOULIAN, originally Vol. 13 in IUP’s fine Cinema One Series, for a more positive view of BECKY SHARP’s dramatic angle.

DOUBLE-BILL: Next up for Mamoulian, Gershwin’s PORGY AND BESS on B’way, then back to Hollywood for the eccentric & funny THE GAY DESPERADO/’36, a rarely seen delight about a Mexican Bandito inspired by Hollywood gangster films. With a priceless turn from Mischa Auer under an enormous sombrero.